“This is what the kingdom of God can be compared to: A farmer sowed good seeds in his field. The farmer is the spirit father; the field is the earth; the good seeds are the sons of the kingdom of God.
“Now, the farmer lay down to sleep and an enemy came to plant weeds in the field. The enemy is temptation, the weeds are the sons of temptation. Then, workers came to the master and said, ‘Did you plant bad seeds? Many weeds have turned up in your field. Send us and we will go and clear the field.’
“And the farmer said, ‘There is no need; you might begin pulling out the weeds and trample the wheat while doing so. Let them grow together. The harvest will come, then I’ll command the reapers to pull out the weeds and will burn them up and will gather the wheat into my shed.’
“The harvest is the end of human life, and the reapers are the powers of heaven. They burn the weeds and the wheat will be cleaned and gathered. Just so, at the end of life, all that was a trick of time will fall away, and only the true life will remain—life in the spirit. For the spirit father there is no evil. The spirit guards what he needs and that which does not come from him, does not exist for him.
“The kingdom of God is like a fishing net. They stretch fishing nets along the sea and catch all kinds of fish. And then, when they pull it out, they separate the rubbish and throw it back into the sea. And so it will be at the end of time: the power of heaven will pick out the good, and the bad will be thrown away.”
And as he finished talking, his students began to ask him, “How should we understand these parables?”
And he said to them, “These parables must be understood in two ways. After all, I tell all of these parables because there are some, like you, my students, who partially understand the nature of the kingdom of God, who understand that the kingdom of God is within every person, and understand how to enter into it; and then there are others who do not understand it. Others look, but do not see, and they hear but do not understand, because their hearts have grown fat. Now I tell these parables on two levels, to the one group as well as to the other. To some, I speak of God, of what God considers his kingdom to be, and they can understand that. To you, though, I speak of what the kingdom of God is for you, the one that is within you.
“And pay attention. Understand the parable of the sower as you should. For you, this is what the parable means: Evil comes to everyone who has understood the meaning of the kingdom of God but has not accepted it into his heart: it snatches up what has been sown. This is the seed that fell on the road. The one that was sown on the stones, that is he who immediately accepts with joy. But there is no root within him, and so he only accepts it for a time and then finds restriction and persecution because of the meaning of the kingdom and so he turns away from it. The one sown in the brush, that is he who has understood the meaning of the kingdom, but his worldly cares and greed for riches snuff out the meaning in him and he bears no fruit. And the one sown on good land, that is the one who has understood the meaning of the kingdom and accepted it into his heart. This one bears fruit, some multiplied one hundred times, some sixty, and some thirty. And whoever holds on will be given much; but whoever does not hold on will have everything taken away from him.
“And therefore, be careful how you understand these parables. Understand them so that you do not become ensnared in error, offenses or concerns, but bear fruit thirty times, sixty times, or one hundred times more. In the soul, the kingdom of heaven flourishes out of nothing, but it gives everything. Like a birch seed, the smallest of all seeds, when it grows up, it is larger than all the other trees and the birds of the heavens build their nests in it.”
Chapter Four THE KINGDOM OF GOD
And therefore the will of the father is life and goodness for all people.
THY KINGDOM COME
Jesus is sorry for people because they do not know true goodness, so he teaches them, saying:
Those who have no belongings and no glory and are not troubled by this are blessed; but those who seek riches and glory are unlucky, because in terms of the father’s will they are poor and destitute, seeking only rewards from people in this temporal life. In order to fulfill the will of the father, one should not fear being poor and despised, one must rejoice in that state so as to demonstrate what real goodness is.
In order to fulfill the will of the father, who gives life and goodness to all people, one must keep five commandments.
The first commandment: Do not offend anyone and do not do anything to provoke evil in anyone, because evil gives birth to evil.
The second commandment: Do not be charmed by women and do not abandon the woman that you’ve united with, because abandoning women and replacing them gives rise to all the debauchery in the world.
The third commandment: Do not swear oaths over anything because it is impossible to promise anything since man is entirely in the hands of the father, and oaths are judged as evil acts.
The fourth commandment: Do not oppose evil, but tolerate insults and do even more than people require of you: do not judge, and you will not be judged. All that man can teach by taking vengeance is vengeance.
The fifth commandment: Do not make distinctions between your homeland and that of others, because all people are the children of one father.
These five commandments should be kept, not to earn the praise of other people, but for yourself, for your own blessedness. Neither prayer nor fasting are necessary. Praying is not necessary because the father knows all that people need. So there is nothing to ask him for; one just needs to try to be within the father’s will, not bearing any malice toward anyone. Fasting is not necessary because people fast only for the praise of other people; and the praise of other people cannot give blessedness. The father gives life; he gives his children what they need. One need only worry about being within the father’s will at any given moment, the rest will take care of itself.
One can only desire strength of spirit, which is what the father gives. The five commandments define the path into the kingdom of heaven. Only this singularly narrow path leads into eternal life. False teachers, wolves in sheep’s clothing, always try to lead people off of this path. One must beware of them. One can always tell a false teacher because they teach evil in the name of good. If they teach violence or punishment, they are false teachers. You can recognize them by the acts which they teach. It is not the one who calls on the name of God that fulfills the will of God, but the one who performs acts of goodness.
So, he who keeps these five commandments will have a life of certainty which no one will be able to take from him, and he who does not keep them will have a life that will be quickly taken from him, so that nothing remains.
Jesus’s teaching amazes and attracts all the people because he acknowledges the people’s freedom. His teaching is a fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy about God’s chosen one bringing light to people, conquering evil and restoring truth through meekness, humility and goodness—and not through violence.
And Jesus walked from city to village and taught all the people about the blessing of fulfilling the father’s will. Jesus felt sorry that they were all perishing, not knowing what true life was, rushing around and tormenting themselves without knowing why, like lambs left unattended by their shepherd.